New York Hakoah

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New York Hakoah is the name of two former soccer clubs from the metropolis of New York in the United States .

Hakoah I (1928–1929)

The club was originally founded by players from Hakoah Vienna , including Béla Guttmann and Rezső Nikolsburger . On a US tour in 1926, the team carried out various friendly matches and was also able to record an audience of up to 46,000 visitors, which meant a record attendance. These numbers remained a record until 1977, when the NASL club New York Cosmos topped the number of visitors to a soccer game in the USA.

Many players of the Viennese club stayed in New York because they were mainly attracted by enormous financial promises. In addition to them, Leopold Drucker also decided to emigrate to the USA, which was unsafe for all players, but was crowned with lucrative value if successful.

In the fall of 1928, the club started playing in the short-lived Eastern Professional Soccer League (EPSL) and were in third place after the first half of the season behind Bethlehem Steel FC (1st) and the New York Giants . With Siegfried Wortmann , a Hakoah player was at the top of the top scorer list. With his 26 hits, he had three fewer than the native Scotsman Archie Stark , who competed for Betlehem Steel. In addition, players like József Eisenhoffer , Max Grünwald , Ernö Schwarz or Moses Häusler scored a considerable number of goals for the newly founded New York club.

In the second half of the season, the Hakoah advanced to the top team in the league and was the biggest surprise of the EPSL at the time, as they were in first place with 28 points after 18 games, which resulted in twelve wins, four draws and two defeats. But even in the second half of the season, no Hakoah player reached first place in the goalscorer list. Archie Stark, however, triumphed once more as the top scorer in the league; he scored 15 goals. In the end, when the two seasons were combined, the Hakoah came in second behind Betlehem Steel.

In 1929 the team consisting of the Austro-Hungarian football players won the National Challenge Cup , the annual trophy of the United States Football Association , which is now known as the "Lamar Hunt US Open Cup". The Hakoah decided the final in a round trip against the St. Louis Madison Kennels . After the first leg in St. Louis was decided in favor of the Hakoah with two late goals from József Eisenhoffer and Siegfried Wortmann, the team managed a 3-0 victory in front of their home crowd in New York.

In the autumn of 1929 a championship was played again, but only the autumn season was counted as a full season, since no more spring season was held after that. The New York Hakoah once again reached second place in the table and again had to admit defeat to the overpowering team of Betlehem Steel FC, which dominated much of the season.

Shortly thereafter, the league was dissolved due to disputes between those responsible for the various leagues that existed at the time, and the teams were returned to their former leagues if they were already in an independent league before the EPSL was founded. So it came about that in 1930 the Brooklyn Hakoah from the American Soccer League merged with the New York Hakoah. The newly formed team, Hakoah All-Stars , began playing in ASL I in the same year . But this association did not have a long life either; already in 1932 it was dissolved again.

Hakoah II (1956–1964)

Shortly before the 1956/57 season, the New York Hakoah was revived when the Brooklyn Hakoah merged with the New York Americans to form the New York Hakoah and henceforth appeared under the name New York Hakoah Americans . Already after the first season the team supervised by Ernö Schwarz was in first place in the ASL table and had ten wins, one draw and one defeat in twelve championship games. In addition, the team made it to the finals of the National Challenge Cup in 1957 , where they were inferior to the St. Louis Kutis SC with 0: 3 and 1: 3.

Also in the season 1957/58 the New York Hakoah Americans were able to assert themselves clearly and won 16 of the total of 18 championship matches; she lost the remaining two. With Lloyd Monsen , the team also had a top scorer in their ranks for the first time. Born in 1931, Monsen scored a total of 22 league goals. The following season 1958/59 was similarly successful, in which the team again took the championship title. After eleven wins, three draws and two defeats from 16 games, the Hakoah was six points behind the strong Ukrainian Nationals in first place in the table. Against this, the Hakoah was eliminated in the Lewis Cup of 1959 in the final with 2: 3. In the same season, the team reached the quarter-finals of the National Challenge Cup, but retired there against the Fall River SC with an aggregate result of 2: 4 on a two-way leg from the current competition.

After falling performance in the following years, the Hakoah could not catch up and could no longer keep up with the other strong teams. Two third places in the seasons 1959/60 and 1960/61 followed two fifth (1961/62, 1963/64) and a sixth place (1962/63) in the final table of the following seasons. Due to the poor performance in the league, the team also failed to establish itself in the National Challenge Cup. In the 1961/62 season, the Hakoah trainer Kurt Lamm was voted "Coach of the Year" (German: Trainer of the Year ) of the ASL. In 1963/64 the Hakoah actor Avner "Abbie" Wolanow was elected Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the ASL, which was the team's last major success.

After the team appeared again under the actual name New York Hakoah from the season 1962/63 , they withdrew from the American Soccer League at the end of the 1963/64 season.

successes

Hakoah I

  • 1 × National Challenge Cup winner: 1929
  • 2 × EPSL runner-up: 1928/29, autumn 1929

Hakoah II

  • 3 × ASL champions: 1956/57, 1957/58, 1958/59
  • 1 × ASL top scorer: 1957/58 (Lloyd Monsen; 22 goals)
  • 1 × "Coach of the Year" of the ASL: 1961/62 (Kurt Lamm)
  • 1 × MVP of ASL: 1963/64 (Avner "Abbie" Wolanow)
  • 1 × National Challenge Cup finalist: 1957
  • 1 × Lewis Cup finalist: 1959

Known players (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leo Drucker - Only at home in football , accessed on March 15, 2010
  2. ↑ 1957 US Open Cup results , accessed March 16, 2010